I went to my first céilidh (pronounced kay-lee) in Aberdeen last December at The Marcliffe Hotel (which, to me personally, was a disaster, since I wore a long ball gown that sweeps the floor, very glamorous for waltz but not suitable for Scottish dance which involves lots of bounces and skips and takes so much [...]

Binge drinking is a big problem in the UK. BBC reported that
Britain’s binge drinking culture is costing the country £20 billion a year, according to a government report. The study by the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit shows 17 million working days are lost to hangovers and drink-related illness each year.
The annual cost to employers [...]

It’s been a long time since I bitched about Scottish weather. Not because I’ve had settled here nicely and developed thick skin to bear the cold. Not because I have had run away, back to sunny Indonesia, for almost 2 months so I missed the most miserable weather. But seriously, because since I’ve got back [...]

Being 12,000 km away from Indonesia, I received the news of Suharto’s at least 8 hours later. Yesterday, as Stuart directly went to sports channel, I went blogwalking and found out that the former Indonesian president died. I immediately sent texts to several friends asking how the situation in Indonesia after the news is spread [...]

I‘m starting to get some more detailed ideas about the Indonesian Expatriates Forum that I initiated a week a go. Please take a look, and if you have any suggestion, don’t hesitate to let me know, whether through this blog or to my email (finallywoken.blog@gmail.com).
As an amateur in the virtual world, I dream big, so [...]

We’re back in Aberdeen after 6-week holiday in Indonesia and Vietnam. The prospect of going back to cold, gray, wet weather wasn’t really appealing; especially when we were transiting in Amsterdam and seeing outside the window of Schiphol Airport. But surprise, surprise, last weekend wasn’t actually that bad. The sun was shining, the sky was [...]

Hello everyone,
I just start creating a forum dedicated to all Indonesians living abroad. This forum, called Indonesian Expatriates Forum, is developed based on my personal experience.
When I moved to Scotland over 6 months a go, I was not well informed about the city’s what, who, where, when, and how. I had (still have) to work [...]

Have you ever been in the situation where you were so mad you did something silly that hurt you back? It happened to me last Saturday in Saigon, which generated tantrum injury term from Stuart. Here’s the story.

After wandering around Ben Thanh Market in a hot, humid temperature to buy oleh-oleh, we ended up [...]

Do you remember my lengthy post about being Indonesian and how I feel that as an Indonesian we are treated lousy by the rest of the world? (click here to read my old posting). Well, the ‘belief’ sticks in my head strongly, and I saw some more proof the other day that confirmed me to [...]

It’s Monday night. I find myself sitting in a big table in Cazbar, drinking glasses of good red wine, listening to the good music (although there was one time I raised my eyebrows when they played Wham!’s Wake Me Up Before You Go Go – and was surprised that nobody protested, not even Jasper, the [...]

Second day of 2008, I woke up at 7.30 to hear the news about a person we know died this morning. He committed suicide at dawn.
It was a difficult to comprehend. Hard to swallow. Not only because the deceased was known to be a very cool, calm, polite person who was in the best shape [...]